have taken Surinam and Minorca; we have gained the security of our East India possessions; and here again we must not forget the Irish Union. A little time will throw light on this troubled and complicated speculation. After all, it is impossible not to feel great admiration for the energy and ability of Buonaparte. Will he declare himself King of France? Perhaps, under all the circumstances, this is now to be wished. Lady Auckland desires to be kindly mentioned. We have had our married daughters and their husbands assembled with us at this place.

Believe me, &c.,

AUCKLAND.

Lord Grenville to Lord Castlereagh.

Cleveland Row, July 3, 1800.

My dear Lord-Having within these few days received the enclosed, I can of course take no other step upon it than to send it to you, and request to know what answer the LordLieutenant and you wish I should give to it. I guess from its contents that the Duke of Leinster supposes he shall lose the County if he attempts to contest it against a Government candidate, and has fallen upon this expedient to secure his family interest.

The prospect of a general election being somewhat remote, it may, I conclude, be best to refer the decision of the line to be taken by Government on this subject to a period rather nearer to the event in question; but, as there may be some circumstances of which I am unapprized, that might make a more specific answer desirable, I have judged it best to trouble you with this letter on the subject. I cannot conclude it without heartily congratulating you on the final success of your labours, and on the great honour which is universally felt to result to you from them.

I have the honour to be, &c.,

GRENVILLE.

Private.

No. 40, Welbeck Street, June 27, 1800.

My Lord-Reposing the same confidence in your Lordship which I did on a former occasion, when I had the honour of expressing my sentiments to you in regard to the Union, in a letter from Bath, it affords me great satisfaction to be able now to inform your Lordship, that my brother Leinster, although he considers the event in question as fatal to the political consequence of his family in Ireland, bows with due submission to the change, and, actuated solely by the honourable motive of preserving the peace of the County of Kildare at the ensuing election of members to be returned to the United Parliament, has consented, in my favour, to decline a contest which, in a different temper of mind, he conceives himself fully adequate to maintain there, and accordingly promised to lend me his support and interest in obtaining the seat for that County, without annexing any other condition than that of vacating it at any time that a change of ministers and measures may afford him the opportunity of more effectually supporting those with whom he has chiefly been in the habit of acting.

It would be idle in me, my Lord, to make a formal avowal here of my own political sentiments and opinions; they are, I trust, sufficiently known, and, being such as warrant me to entertain the hope that my nomination in the capacity alluded to may not prove unacceptable to Government, I have only to solicit the favour of your Lordship's friendly offices and counsels, in regard to the method fit to be pursued, in order to secure a point so flattering to my feelings as a warm and steady adherent to the present administration, and to dispose the Government of Ireland to countenance my pretensions preferably to those of any other candidate, if circumstances should call me abroad before the elections take place.

I have the honour to remain, &c.,

ROBERT STEPHEN FITZGERALD.

Private.

Lord Castlereagh to the Duke of Portland.

Dublin Castle, July 6, 1800. My dear Lord-I beg leave to offer to your Grace my humble and grateful acknowledgments for your letter of the 2nd inst., which conveys to me his Majesty's gracious approbation of my conduct in terms so peculiarly kind and flattering, as to leave me nothing so anxiously to desire as that your Grace would undertake to express to the King my dutiful thanks, and to assure his Majesty of my earnest solicitude to merit a continuance of that favour with which his Majesty has thought fit to distinguish my humble efforts in his service on the present occasion.

The wisdom and ability of the high personage to whom the conduct of this great measure has been entrusted left me little to do other than implicitly to follow his instructions, and to take care that no inadvertence on my part should counteract the effects which his talents and the authority of his high character were calculated to produce. His labours have happily been crowned with success; and I trust his Excellency will live to receive, even from the opponents of the measure, a corresponding tribute of approbation with that which has already reached him through your Grace from his Sovereign.

The distinction of a British Peerage, which his Majesty has been pleased to destine for my family, is certainly the most valuable testimony of the King's favour, as well in Lord Londonderry's estimation as mine, which could have been proposed to us; but my father, whose feelings on this point would naturally govern mine, desires me to assure your Grace that his first wish and earnest desire is, that the accomplishment of his Majesty's gracious intentions, in point of time, should be entirely governed and regulated by what appears to his Majesty and to his ministers most likely to conduce to his interests.

The pains your Grace has taken to convey, with so much

personal friendship to me, the King's pleasure on this subject, and the care with which his Majesty has condescended to watch over the interests of every branch of the family, leave me nothing farther to add than again to entreat of your Grace to lay Lord Londonderry's and my dutiful acknowledgments before the King, to express to his Majesty the deep sense we entertain of his continued kindness, and to assure his Majesty we are disposed to receive, as an additional mark of his countenance and favour, that his Majesty has condescended to point out to us any line of conduct which, under any possible circumstances, might afford us an opportunity of rendering to his Majesty more useful services.

I have the honour to be, &c.,

CASTLEREAGH.

Lord Cornwallis to the Duke of Portland.

Private and Confidential.

Dublin Castle, July 7, 1800.

My dear Lord-The assurances which are given in your Grace's letter, dated the 27th ultimo, that, if you had thought it possible that your despatches of the 13th of June could have placed me in so distressing a situation as I had represented with respect to my feelings of personal honour and good faith, they would not have been transmitted, and the encouragement you hold out to me to believe that his Majesty will not refuse his consent to those promotions which he feels himself the least disposed to confirm, provided that they are recommended by me in consequence of absolute and irrevocable engagements, have afforded me very sincere satisfaction.

I have used every means in my power to obviate the most inconvenient parts of the arrangement, which I detailed in my letter of the 3rd June, and particularly those which I thought were likely to be most disagreeable to his Majesty, but I am sorry to say that I have hitherto met with very little success; and the enclosed copy of a letter, which I have received from Lord Carleton, stating his claims to retire from his judicial

situation, under the provision of the Act of Parliament, deprives me of the only argument which I could have hoped to use with success, in order to induce him to relinquish the Representative Peerage, which object has been generally sought after with an earnestness not to be described, and has involved me in my greatest difficulties.

Lord Londonderry and Lord Castlereagh, who never brought forward any pretensions of their own, are perfectly willing to wait for that mark of his Majesty's favour, to which I thought it my duty to state their pretensions, until it shall suit his Majesty's convenience; but it will be impossible for me to throw back the Marquess of Drogheda on the list of Representative Peers, without not only disappointing any hope, which I had sanctioned, but being guilty of a breach of a positive engagement.

I think it unnecessary at present to make any further reference to the letters which have lately passed between us, than to assure your Grace that I shall ever set the highest value upon your friendship and esteem, and that I shall endeavour to conduct the public business in which I am engaged in the manner that I think will be most agreeable to the views and wishes of his Majesty's Ministers.

I have the honour to be, &c.,

CORNWALLIS.

Lord Camden to Lord Castlereagh.

Arlington Street, July 16, 1800.

I have not seen the Irish correspondence lately; I therefore have not read that letter of the Duke of Portland, in which he wished Lord Cornwallis to waive some of his recommendations, but I am told it was written in a very ungracious style. If such was its tenour, it certainly did not convey the sentiments of his colleagues, for every one of us are sensible of your joint merits, and no one, perhaps, so much as myself, who knows and can therefore appreciate your difficulties. My advice was to agree to all the recommendations with the best grace possible.